edwin2win wrote:
We are working on this Joomla procedure to see if we can simplify it but for the moment, this is not the case.

When you have a look in the joomla directory

\installation\sql\mysql

you will find plenty of SQL script that will help you perform the modification of the Joomla 1.5 layout to arrive to the Joomla 1.7 layout.

You have SQL scripts like
diff_15_to_16.sql
joomla_update_16beta2.sql
joomla_update_16beta13.sql
......

Has any work been made to, as you write, "simplify" the 1.5/1.7 migration path to J 2.5?

We have been waiting patiently.

We know and we are working activelly on different solutions to improve the things.

We were at the "J and Beyonnd" (Joomla international conference) and that was also subject of discussion.

Thank you Edwin.

Can you give us a link of the presentation you did at J&Beyond?

Did anybody stream the presentation?

Thanks.

We didn't present things at J&Beyond but be present during all the 3 days and of course participate to different work group (including multisite).

I know that some streaming were done by J&Beyond team but I don't know if they were all recorded.
I didn't found them on their website. Perhaps we need to wait few days before they publish them.

Our latest presentation was at the Joomla day strasbourg in march 2012 that you can find
www.jms2win.com/en/documentation/doc_det...-day-strasbourg-2012

All I can tell you is that I have been able to discuss with some very technical guy in the JPlatform and explain them in detail some issue that we have discovered.
We discussed about solutions and now the JPlatform team is aware about the issue in the platform. I don't know yet if they will fix them in the JPlatform used by Joomla 2.5 or if they will fix them in the JPlatform used by Joomla 3.x

If they fix that, not only this will improve the standalone Joomla but we also expect that in a near future, JMS will no more need to hack the Joomla core to fix issues.
We have explained the issues and now that the joomla team understood the reason, they can decide of the best solution.

OK... I Have a procedure you can use, now that I have upgraded my J1.5 Master and all my J1.5 Slave sites....

Now that I have finished let me say that even without JMS MultiSites upgrading from J1.5 to J2.5 is a big task, and it grows exponentially with the size of your site. I had 10 slave sites to upgrade plus my master site. My Master site and 8 of my slave sites were for the most part simple Joomla sites and I was able to make the upgrade preparations for them in basically 1 day; however, the 2 remaining slave sites are for my 2 biggest customers and they were 2 beasts... 1 of them took about a week and the other one took about 1 month to complete, and again this was only the Joomla upgrade part, nothing to do with JMS MultiSites.

So here is the guide to Upgrade and then Migrate your sites manually...

Upgrade
I. Master Site

Upgrade your master site using JUpgrade, there is a guide on Joomla!'s website, and make sure that it has every component, module, and plugin installed that your slave sites will use, and JMS MultiSites; however, Do Not attempt to setup your slave site yet.

II. Slave Sites

To ensure that there were no conflicts with the master site, through the symlink folders/files, I chose to install a stand alone Joomla 1.5 into another folder on my host.
Create your Slave site upgrade "kit"

1. Install Joomla 1.5 to a temp folder on your site


2. Install all of your shared Components, Modules, and Plugins


3. Delete the folders Images, Templates, and if you use K2 the Media folder. (There might be other Extensions that use the Media folder, but K2 was the only one I had that I'm aware of that stored content there specific to the site.)


4. Delete the files configuration.php, and I also had to delete the php.ini file (This could be due to the shared hosting service that I use.)


5. Create a Zip file backup of the files and folders left in your temp folder as you will need to have this setup again for each of your slave sites.

Create your Upgraded DB and folder content for your slave site.

1. Copy your slave sites Images, Templates, (If using K2, Media) folders and the configuration.php file into the Temp upgrade folder.


2. Now visit the temp site and make sure that it is equivalent to the live site. (Maybe this is specific to my template, but I found that my temp sites always loaded the default template color, instead of the color I had chosen on their live site, you may or may not experience this but if you do, don't worry about it as my template never upgraded with the sites.)


3. Login to the administration of the mirrored slave site, and install JUpgrade and let it upgrade your site


4. Now in the temp\jupgrade folder of this temp site you can go through the entire process of prepping the slaves new J2.5 site.


5. Now that you have completed the J2.5 upgrade on the slave site delete all but the images, templates, (K2 users) media folders, and the configuration.php file so that the JUpgrade folder only has those 3 folders and 1 file in it.


6. Move the JUpgrade folder inside the live slave sites folder on your host


7. More Slave Sites to prepare? Delete all files and folders in the temp folder except for the compressed copy of your "blank" Joomla 1.5 install we created in the Slave site upgrade "kit" steps above and continue to the next step. If you have finished all slave sites simply delete your temp folder completely and proceed to the next set of steps below, although you may want to hold onto the J1.5 zip file so that you can do this again if you find a problem later.


8. Un-zip your "blank" Joomla 1.5 install we created in the Slave site upgrade "kit" steps above and restart this section.

Migrate
Migrate Your J1.5 JMS MultiSites to J2.5 JMS MultiSites
I suggest doing this at night to diminish the down time to your customers as all of your slave sites will go down from step 1 and will only come back online one at a time as you complete the migration of each individual site.

1. As a precaution to give you something to return to move all files and folders in your Master J1.5 site, excluding the Master JUpgrade folder, into a new folder as a backup.


2. Move all content from your Master Sites JUpgrade folder into your Master sites designated folder for the master sites domain.


3. Check your master site to make sure it is loading properly for public visibility.

Migrate your J1.5 MultiSite slaves to J2.5 JMS MultiSites

1. Move all files and folders of the slave site to be upgraded into a subfolder.


2. In your Master Site Administration Setup the Slave site


3. Access your Slave site domain, which will launch the J2.5 Installation


4. Perform the install as if it was the first time you were setting up this site. (I would suggest using a temp database for the upgrade as it will simplify clean up later)


5. Delete the images, templates (and K2 users the media) folders.


6. Copy the images, templates (and K2 users the media) folders from Upgraded DB and folder content for your slave site.


7. Do NOT delete the configuration file created by the J2.5 installation, instead edit it and copy the DB Name, Username, Password, table prefix stored in the backed up configuration file into the new configuration.php


8. At this point your slave site should be live on J2.5, check it real quick to make sure it looks right, and is operating properly, just remember your other slave sites are still completely down so don't spend too much time you can come back and tweak later.


9. Repeat this for each of your slave sites.

Don't forget to check your URL rewrite settings and htaccess file if you use these features.

Most of you are probably on a shared hosting service and are using JMS MultiSites because as me you discovered that your "unlimited" account had a file count limitation, please note that during this process you will most likely pass this file limitation so be careful to keep the extra files created by this upgrade process minimized at all times. This is why I delete files through out the process that are not required. I also discovered though this process that my unlimited account (with unlimited MySQL databases) has some limitations on the number of tables and size of the databases both individually and as a group. So once you have completed the process you will want to backup your databases that included the J1.5 tables, and then delete the J1.5 tables, and temp tables created by the install of each of the J2.5 Slave sites so that all that is left in your DBs is the tables used for the J2.5 live sites.

This process is NOT fast, but now that I have gone through it I don't know how much JMS2Win could do to simplify the process as the most time consuming part was actually just the standard upgrade process for Joomla.. So good luck to all that decide to proceed, and I fully encourage it simply for the security.

Edwin2win, this is what I was asking for, as you will notice I didn't have to "code" anything I simply had to follow a process/guide. Since you would not make one I have.

Thank you for your detailled explaintion.

For your information, JMS 1.3.x includes a new "maintenance" functionality that will help performing multisites migration and multisites database fixes.
I think that your procedure and the new "maintenance" functionality will be complementary. This is an extension of the joomla 2.5 / extension manager / database / fix functionality.

It will be available this month (july).